BOOK REVIEW Postwar enslavement of half of Europe
IRON CURTAIN: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum (London: Allen Lane/Penguin) Hardcover: 614 pages ISBN: 9780713998689 RRP: AUD$49.95 Reviewed by Bill James When I reviewed Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History a decade ago (News Weekly, September 6, 2003), I commented that it was refreshing to come across a baby-boomer journalist from the left-wing Washington Post who was prepared to honestly criticise communism. Her appraisal of communism is just as clear-sighted in her new book, in which she analyses the Soviet Union’s takeover of Eastern Europe between the end of World War II and the Hungarian…